Counters

Donating 11,000 Books to School Libraries to support Children's Literacy

Saturday, 1 June 2013

We Aspire to Inspire

We are Target Who.We are a small group of thirty Doctor Who fans and we hope to inspire
you.

To teachers, pupils and other readers we hope to demonstrate what can be
achieved with passion, communication, courtesy and teamwork BUT to Doctor Who
fans, wherever you are in the world, we want to inspire you to embrace our
cause and JOIN US.We mentioned this at the very end of our very
first post.We have mentioned this in
each and every interview we have given.We are quietly whispering it, and some of you have already responded to
our call.The eagle eyed amongst you may
have noticed a post that appeared on our Facebook page from Donald Bain on the
16th of May.It reads:

Well done, great idea. I don't
have any mint Target books but I did find 6 unread hardbacks from 2005 (Dr 9)
at the back of a shelf and have donated to my kids local school here in Hobart.
Thanks for the inspiration.

That’s Hobart in Tasmania.Wow!How
wonderful is life in the 21st Century.We sit and write a blog in the United Kingdom
and on the other side of the world someone is moved by our words to embrace our
cause.Donald Bain we salute you.We are Target Who and we are growing.We are now a small group of THIRTY-ONE
fans.Welcome to the team Donald.Whenever you hear Target Who mentioned, know
that you were part of what we achieved.Every fan that now donates a book in our name is following your lead.

And they are following already.We heard off Steve Goddard from Oxford via a
Facebook email.He told us of some of
his childhood memories of reading Target novels and added “I'll be more than happy to make a donation of my own:
'The Daleks' would be a very good option.”When he does, he
becomes part of Target Who.

In
our other mailbox we received a message from Lucy Hatherell and her 11 year
old daughter Isabel.They told us “Just read your blog and think this is BRILLIANT! My
daughter and me are both massive Whovians so it was a no brainer to donate
some books to her school! So please add Waddington and West Bradford Primary
School to your map who will soon be receiving a lovely parcel containing: Doctor
Who and the Loch Ness Monster, Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, Doctor Who
and the Day of the Daleks"

When
they do, they become part of Target Who too! And so we grow.

We
also heard from “Koth” on a comment on our blog.“What a
great plan! I have some books I was going to get rid of. I can donate them to
your cause. They are the 90's reprints and never been read, in my library
doing nothing but being a variant cover.”We’ll
find a nice school library or three for his books and he’ll become part of
Target Who too!

Finally
we heard off another fan whose efforts have impressed us so much, we are going
to hand the blog over to him temporarily to tell you himself what he’s
done.His name is Roger Smith, and
some of you may know him in Doctor Who circles as Black Dalek.Over to You Roger:

I love the idea of putting something back.
I have been a Doctor Who fan for 50 years.
Doctor Who taught me so much:compassion; standing up for what is right; helping when you can.It is the small things that make BIG
differences.

It also taught me to
read.The first book I ever bought for myself
was Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.I
read that book and the universe opened up to me its endless possibilities.So what Target Who are doing ticks all the
boxes for me and I wanted to contribute.

I also play cricket for a
village team.It is our 75th
Anniversary this year and we are doing things to support our local
community.I had a word with our
chairman and the club has agreed to boost my donation to our local schools with
even more books.Everyone is a winner!

I set out to buy a few books,
but I discovered that The Book People were selling 6 target Reprints as a set
of only £4.99!If you spent over £25 you
got free postage and packing.I got 36
books for £30. I also sent for 10 of the
£1 The Silurian gift off Amazon, so I set a target of fifty books - one for
each year of Doctor’s Who’s existence.However, I was so impressed with the Quick Read books that it soon
became 75 books - one for each year of Woodmancote Cricket Club’s existence.

I’ll be spreading them far and wide.Not just the local village school, but also
other schools in Birmingham where I grew up including going HOME I will be
taking AUTON INVASION along with some others back to Pegasus Castle Vale, the
School where it all started for me with the chipper club so very long ago and to
schools where relatives of mine now attend.

Roger Smith and Woodmancote Cricket Club we salute
you.Your generosity has taken our
breath way.We hoped to inspire fans to
also donate a book.We never expected
anything like this. (The Book People Offer)

We are Target Who and we are barely one month old.We have whispered an invitation and look the
response.Now we raise our voice and say
“JOIN US!”How many of you reading this
recognise the stories above?Do you have
books on a shelf you will never read again like Donald? Do you have Books in
cupboards or lofts like Steve, Lucy and Isabel?Do you have unread duplicate books that remain in your collection just
because it has a difference cover like Koth?Wouldn’t all those books be better off in a school library where they
can be read and enjoyed again and again and again until the distant day when
they fall apart?Can you afford to buy a
book or talk other people into also supporting our cause like Roger?

JOIN US!Become
part of Target Who.We have added
another counter at the top of the blog to record books donated by YOU in
support of us.We have added a pin in Hobart, Tasmania for the books donated by Donald.The others will get pins when they confirm
their books are now in a school.How
many pins will we get on the map with your donations too?We
hope you will contribute many.We hope they will
span the globe.Can we get at least one
inspired pin in EVERY US State?Can we get
inspired pins in Canada? Australia?New
Zealand?It is up to YOU.Finally we have created an inspired donations photo album for
photos of you with your books.Tweet us,
message us, email us, or post to our wall.Just tell us how many and where and include a photo if you like.Use a pseudonym if you want.When you do, you become part of Target Who.

We know that Doctor Who Fans are the most generous of
people.For years we have proudly
watched as so many of us have quietly raised money for many, many wonderful
causes.This is the 50th
Anniversary of our show.It is our year.We don’t believe that anything on the scale
of what the thirty of us have started has ever
been attempted by a group of Doctor Who fans, (or any other type of fans for
that matter).Nothing like it may ever
happen again.This year we will put
14,000 books into thousands of schools completely free of charge to support
children’s literacy.But imagine for one
minute that EVERY Doctor Who fan in the world also donated just one book to a
local school… together you would make our 14,000 books seem insignificant.Every single one of you that steps up and
joins us will inspire another to do the same.Will you join us?Will you help
us inspire an entire generation to embrace reading?Will you become part of what could
potentially become the single largest fan lead charitable scheme in the history
of the Doctor Who Fandom?

We are Target Who.We started as thirty Doctor Who fans and a plan to inspire some school
children. We want to be so much more.Join us and we can inspire the world.

6 comments:

I'll donate a dozen Who novels to Vaucluse Public School in Sydney, New South Wales.

These include the Target books Face of Evil, Keys of Marinus, Ultimate Evil, The Ark, The Sea Devils, Talons of Weng Chiang, Stones of Blood, Planet of the Daleks, Android Invasion and some random Past Doctor and Missing Adventures.

That's fantastic David. Thank you so much for supporting the Target Who cause. You fans in Oceania are doing Doctor Who fandom proud. Hopefully you will inspire a few fans in other parts of the world to join us too.

Please can you let us know the names of the two schools and we can add a couple of pins to the map.